Accompany – Leslie Engler

Accompany developed a cutting-edge relationship intelligence platform powered by AI

The goal? To deliver personal, actionable insights on millions of individuals and companies. By harnessing this intelligent database, users could easily identify key people and foster stronger, more meaningful relationships. In 2018, Accompany was acquired by Cisco.

In 2014, I moved from NYC to the Bay Area to join Accompany as their first design lead. Back then, it was a small Los Altos startup, and I handled everything creative—UX/UI, branding, logo design, and even signage. The startup life meant wearing many hats, from shaping the product to planning ski trips (and pushing boba runs).

Client:
Accompany
Los Altos, CA
2014 – 2018

Role:
UX/UI design
UX research
Data visualization
Branding

Platforms:
MacOS
Window
iOS
Android

Platforms:
MacOS
Windows

CHALLENGE

Execs needed a faster, more powerful tool to keep up with key people.

Key Challenges

Building a seamless workflow:
Integrating diverse data sources into a unified platform enables users to research, connect, and engage without toggling between multiple applications.

Building trust:
Ensuring users trust AI-driven insights while addressing privacy concerns involves designing interfaces that clearly distinguish between private and public data.

Information overload:
Presenting extensive data in an accessible and visually appealing manner is essential to highlight actionable insights effectively.

THE PROCESS

01. EXPLORATION

User Interviews

• Conducted in-depth interviews with executives to understand their workflow, networking habits, and pain points.
• Asked how they prepared for meetings, found new contacts, and maintained professional relationships.
• These insights helped shape Accompany’s profile structure, calendar integration, and news features to provide relevant, time-saving insights.

Competitive Analysis

Our primary competitor was LinkedIn, the dominant platform for professional networking. While LinkedIn provided company and people profiles, it lacked real-time, AI-driven insights tailored to upcoming meetings and ongoing relationship management. Other tools, like Calendly, helped with scheduling but didn’t provide context on the people being met. News aggregators surfaced industry updates but weren’t personalized to a user’s network.

Key takeaways:
• Fragmented Solutions: Executives and salespeople had to juggle multiple apps—LinkedIn for profiles, news apps for updates, and email for past interactions—resulting in inefficiencies.
• Lack of Personalization: Competitors provided general information, but none synthesized data across multiple sources to deliver actionable, context-rich insights.
• Missed Relationship Opportunities: No existing solution proactively identified key people to engage with or surfaced insights at the right moment, such as before meetings.
• Cumbersome User Experience: Navigating between various platforms made staying informed a time-consuming task, reinforcing the need for an all-in-one solution like Accompany.

02. PROBLEM DEFINITION

Exploratory Prototypes

To help define the problems we aimed to solve and clarify our goals, we created mockups and prototypes to explore possibilities with the product and engineering teams. Using these prototypes, we conducted another round of user studies to validate our hypotheses, which provided concrete ideas that helped secure leadership buy-in.

Design + Eng

A large part of creating a product like this relied on what we could technically do. What was feasible? What data do we have access to? Because of these valuable early conversations with our AI engineering team, they helped us to understand what problems we were able to tackle and which ones we could aim high for.

Field Research

• Shadowed salespeople in their work environment to observe their workflow and challenges.
• Identified pain points like difficulty accessing company org charts and time spent researching prospects, leading to the development of the Org Chart and Potential Prospects features.

03. IDEATION

Data Visualization

Much exploration was done around data visualization to understand what would enhance and emphasize the story we were trying to tell, rather than be overwhelming or distracting.

Key things we considered were:
• Choosing the right chart type

• How to use color

• Highlighting key insights
• Prioritizing understanding

• Providing context
• Simplifying for clarity

Company Profiles: AI powered insights without the prepwork.

Accompany’s AI-driven company profiles streamlined meeting prep by answering key questions: Who do I know here? Who should I know? Our AI automatically gathered and analyzed critical data, giving users instant access to:

Key features included:
Company Overview: Essential details such as mission, history, and industry classification.
Leadership: Key executives and board members, surfaced through intelligent data parsing.
Financial Information: AI tracked revenue, funding rounds, and stock performance.
Recent News: Aggregated news articles and press releases related to the company.
Relationship Insights: Identified mutual connections and past interactions.
Competitor Analysis: Smart insights into key industry rivals.

By leveraging AI, Accompany eliminated manual research, delivering real-time, relevant insights to help users stay informed and build stronger connections effortlessly.

People Profiles: A competitive edge in relationship building.

Accompany’s AI-driven people profiles delivered real-time insights on professional contacts, making relationship-building effortless. With intelligent data gathering, users gained access to:

Professional Info: Profiles included roles, experience, education, and links to external profiles.
Personalized Insights: AI-surfaced news, authored content, and shared connections for smarter interactions.
Communication History: Synced emails and calendars for seamless follow-ups.
Smart Connection Mapping: AI-identified mutual contacts and overlapping experiences, such as attending the same events or working at the same companies, to strengthen networking opportunities.

By consolidating this rich array of info into a single, interface, execs could deepen their relationships and engage with their networks more effectively.

Let's build something amazing

Phone: 858.220.1459
Email: hello@leslieengler.com

EHG